July 2018 - cypherpunks-legacy

Public Key Infrastructure: An Artifact...
by None 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/PKIMisFit.html Public Key Infrastructure: An Artifact Ill-Fitted to the Needs of the Information Society Abstract It has been conventional wisdom that, for e-commerce to fulfill its potential, each party to a transaction must be confident in the identity of the others. Digital signature technology, based on public key cryptography, has been claimed as the means whereby this can be achieved. Digital signatures do little, however, unless a substantial infrastructure is in place to provide a basis for believing that the signature means something of significance to the relying party. Conventional, hierarchical PKI, built around the ISO standard X.509, has been, and will continue to be, a substantial failure. This paper examines that form of PKI architecture, and concludes that it is a very poor fit to the real needs of cyberspace participants. The reasons are its inherently hierarchical and authoritarian nature, the unreasonable presumptions it makes about the security of private keys, a range of other technical defects, confusions about what it is that a certificate actually authenticates, and its inherent privacy-invasiveness. Alternatives are identified. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to "dcsb-request(a)reservoir.com" with one line of text: "help".

1 0

Public Key Infrastructure: An Artifact...
by None 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/PKIMisFit.html Public Key Infrastructure: An Artifact Ill-Fitted to the Needs of the Information Society Abstract It has been conventional wisdom that, for e-commerce to fulfill its potential, each party to a transaction must be confident in the identity of the others. Digital signature technology, based on public key cryptography, has been claimed as the means whereby this can be achieved. Digital signatures do little, however, unless a substantial infrastructure is in place to provide a basis for believing that the signature means something of significance to the relying party. Conventional, hierarchical PKI, built around the ISO standard X.509, has been, and will continue to be, a substantial failure. This paper examines that form of PKI architecture, and concludes that it is a very poor fit to the real needs of cyberspace participants. The reasons are its inherently hierarchical and authoritarian nature, the unreasonable presumptions it makes about the security of private keys, a range of other technical defects, confusions about what it is that a certificate actually authenticates, and its inherent privacy-invasiveness. Alternatives are identified. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to "dcsb-request(a)reservoir.com" with one line of text: "help".

1 0

Public Key Infrastructure: An Artifact...
by None 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/PKIMisFit.html Public Key Infrastructure: An Artifact Ill-Fitted to the Needs of the Information Society Abstract It has been conventional wisdom that, for e-commerce to fulfill its potential, each party to a transaction must be confident in the identity of the others. Digital signature technology, based on public key cryptography, has been claimed as the means whereby this can be achieved. Digital signatures do little, however, unless a substantial infrastructure is in place to provide a basis for believing that the signature means something of significance to the relying party. Conventional, hierarchical PKI, built around the ISO standard X.509, has been, and will continue to be, a substantial failure. This paper examines that form of PKI architecture, and concludes that it is a very poor fit to the real needs of cyberspace participants. The reasons are its inherently hierarchical and authoritarian nature, the unreasonable presumptions it makes about the security of private keys, a range of other technical defects, confusions about what it is that a certificate actually authenticates, and its inherent privacy-invasiveness. Alternatives are identified. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to "dcsb-request(a)reservoir.com" with one line of text: "help".

1 0

Public Key Infrastructure: An Artifact...
by None 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/PKIMisFit.html Public Key Infrastructure: An Artifact Ill-Fitted to the Needs of the Information Society Abstract It has been conventional wisdom that, for e-commerce to fulfill its potential, each party to a transaction must be confident in the identity of the others. Digital signature technology, based on public key cryptography, has been claimed as the means whereby this can be achieved. Digital signatures do little, however, unless a substantial infrastructure is in place to provide a basis for believing that the signature means something of significance to the relying party. Conventional, hierarchical PKI, built around the ISO standard X.509, has been, and will continue to be, a substantial failure. This paper examines that form of PKI architecture, and concludes that it is a very poor fit to the real needs of cyberspace participants. The reasons are its inherently hierarchical and authoritarian nature, the unreasonable presumptions it makes about the security of private keys, a range of other technical defects, confusions about what it is that a certificate actually authenticates, and its inherent privacy-invasiveness. Alternatives are identified. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to "dcsb-request(a)reservoir.com" with one line of text: "help".

1 0

Public Key Infrastructure: An Artifact...
by None 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/PKIMisFit.html Public Key Infrastructure: An Artifact Ill-Fitted to the Needs of the Information Society Abstract It has been conventional wisdom that, for e-commerce to fulfill its potential, each party to a transaction must be confident in the identity of the others. Digital signature technology, based on public key cryptography, has been claimed as the means whereby this can be achieved. Digital signatures do little, however, unless a substantial infrastructure is in place to provide a basis for believing that the signature means something of significance to the relying party. Conventional, hierarchical PKI, built around the ISO standard X.509, has been, and will continue to be, a substantial failure. This paper examines that form of PKI architecture, and concludes that it is a very poor fit to the real needs of cyberspace participants. The reasons are its inherently hierarchical and authoritarian nature, the unreasonable presumptions it makes about the security of private keys, a range of other technical defects, confusions about what it is that a certificate actually authenticates, and its inherent privacy-invasiveness. Alternatives are identified. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to "dcsb-request(a)reservoir.com" with one line of text: "help".

1 0

"Cryptol"
by Perry E. Metzger 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Cryptol is a domain specific language for the design, implementation and verification of cryptographic algorithms, developed over the past decade by Galois for the United States National Security Agency. It has been used successfully in a number of projects, and is also in use at Rockwell Collins, Inc. Domain-specific languages (DSLs) allow subject-matter experts to design solutions in using familiar concepts and constructs. Cryptol, as a DSL, allows domain experts in cryptography to design and implement cryptographic algorithms with a high degree of assurance in the correctness of their design, and at the same time, producing a high performance implementation of their algorithms. http://www.galois.com/blog/2008/12/24/cryptol-the-language-of-cryptography-… -- Perry E. Metzger perry(a)piermont.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo(a)metzdowd.com

1 0

"Cryptol"
by Perry E. Metzger 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Cryptol is a domain specific language for the design, implementation and verification of cryptographic algorithms, developed over the past decade by Galois for the United States National Security Agency. It has been used successfully in a number of projects, and is also in use at Rockwell Collins, Inc. Domain-specific languages (DSLs) allow subject-matter experts to design solutions in using familiar concepts and constructs. Cryptol, as a DSL, allows domain experts in cryptography to design and implement cryptographic algorithms with a high degree of assurance in the correctness of their design, and at the same time, producing a high performance implementation of their algorithms. http://www.galois.com/blog/2008/12/24/cryptol-the-language-of-cryptography-… -- Perry E. Metzger perry(a)piermont.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo(a)metzdowd.com

1 0

Re: [cryptography] really sub-CAs for MitM deep packet inspectors? (Re: Auditable CAs)
by Peter Gutmann 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Ondrej Mikle <ondrej.mikle(a)nic.cz> writes: >How do MitM boxes react when they MitM connection to a server with self- >signed cert (or cert issued by an obsure CA not trusted by MitM box)? For one example, see http://wikileaks.org/spyfiles/docs/bluecoat/219_blue-coat-systems-reference… and http://wikileaks.org/spyfiles/docs/bluecoat/246_blue-coat-systems-deploymen…. In general it looks like it's a mixture of "it's configurable" and "it depends on the vendor" (the above only tells you what Bluecoat do). Interesting to note that the Bluecoat hardware has problems MITM-ing Windows Update, because Microsoft apply the quite sensible measure of only allowing something signed by a known Windows Update cert (or at least on a Microsoft-supplied trust list), rather than any old cert that turns up as long as it's signed by some CA somewhere. I've heard of a similar approach proposed for smartphone mobile banking apps, you hardcode in a cert that's used to verify a whitelist of known-good certs for banks (more or less like Microsoft's CTLs), and then it doesn't matter what certs the CAs sign because if it's not on the CTL then it doesn't get trusted. >Given the state of security/auditing of "private sub-CAs" as described, was >there ever a report of a breach (e.g. stolen key, fraudulently issued certs)? You're joking, right? Peter. _______________________________________________ cryptography mailing list cryptography(a)randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

1 0

Re: [tor-talk] Pittsburgh Bombing Threats and Mix-Master
by Matthew Kaufman 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Yeah, There honestly seemed to be too few and far too static remail relay servers to be highly anonymous; what if you go through only 3 and hack the out box, to the previous, to the first, back to the original sender? Matt On Thursday, May 17, 2012, wrote: > Tell me if I am wrong, but I think it's not worth to bother with > mixmaster, mixmion, remailing, etc. anymore. It's practically dead. > > Some remailing systems have been written by high profile people, some of > them are now working on Tor. > > Due to high latency, remailers are theoretically more secure than low > latency Tor. There are too few users, too few servers and too few > development. Project mailing lists are empty since years. Tor has much more > of everything. > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_remailer > > > > > My last question could this work *with* tor, in combination? > > Never looked if it's still up to date, but there is a big wiki page about > it. > > https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/RemailingAndTor > > ______________________________________________________ > powered by Secure-Mail.biz - anonymous and secure e-mail accounts. > > _______________________________________________ > tor-talk mailing list > tor-talk(a)lists.torproject.org <javascript:;> > https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk > _______________________________________________ tor-talk mailing list tor-talk(a)lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

1 0

Public Key Infrastructure: An Artifact...
by None 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/PKIMisFit.html Public Key Infrastructure: An Artifact Ill-Fitted to the Needs of the Information Society Abstract It has been conventional wisdom that, for e-commerce to fulfill its potential, each party to a transaction must be confident in the identity of the others. Digital signature technology, based on public key cryptography, has been claimed as the means whereby this can be achieved. Digital signatures do little, however, unless a substantial infrastructure is in place to provide a basis for believing that the signature means something of significance to the relying party. Conventional, hierarchical PKI, built around the ISO standard X.509, has been, and will continue to be, a substantial failure. This paper examines that form of PKI architecture, and concludes that it is a very poor fit to the real needs of cyberspace participants. The reasons are its inherently hierarchical and authoritarian nature, the unreasonable presumptions it makes about the security of private keys, a range of other technical defects, confusions about what it is that a certificate actually authenticates, and its inherent privacy-invasiveness. Alternatives are identified. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to "dcsb-request(a)reservoir.com" with one line of text: "help".

1 0